From mwickett@decisionsolutions.com Mon May 3 21:40:48 1999 Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 09:42:36 +0100 From: Mark Wickett Reply-To: canals@blacksheep.org To: Canals Mailing List Subject: TRIP REPORT: Out and About on the Cut - Day 5 [The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] OUT AND ABOUT ON THE CUT - day 5 Recap: The n.b. "Ruddy Duck" has come from Apperley Bridge to Barnoldswick through rain and wind before turning for the journey back home. Thursday: The first thing I knew about this morning was the loud scream of the boiling kettle. A welcome cup of coffee woke me up properly and some stale bread seemed to do the same for a couple of friendly ducks. We checked our fuel, stern grease and weedhatch - last time we were here, we spent two hours cutting away a plastic washing line from around the prop - and with everything okay, we punctuated the silence of East Marton with the roar of our engine and we were off. We left the village and its pungent aromas behind and enjoyed the wooded cutting - now illuminated by the sun breaking through the clouds - until the trees receded to reveal the landscape we both loved so much. As we described on our passage through this section a couple of days previously, the canal between East Marton and Bank Newton turns and twists its way through the bleakness of the Dales, clinging precariously to the sides of the hills and doubling back on itself to achieve a distance of a mile or more by water - a few hundred yards as the crow flies. Or more precisely this morning, as the oystercatcher flies: we saw enormous numbers of these birds stood in the surrounding fields, bracing themselves against the not inconsiderable gusts of wind that roared over the contours. And then we saw some other birds that were not familiar to us novice ornithologists. I grabbed my pocket book of British birds and at first glance, it was an osprey until Catherine pointed out that you don't find them around here at any time of the year, so on further inspection - and we had plenty of specimens and time to examine them - we concluded they were hen harriers. Our twitching was brought to a conclusion by the arrival of Bank Newton locks (did we move to them or did the wind blow them to us?). The wind was extremely strong and the two of us made slow work of the first few locks. Having left lock 37 (second to bottom), I pointed the boat towards the bank whilst Catherine walked on to prepare the final lock. From past experience, I knew that the bottom towpath-side gate was prone to being blown open, so I thought I could tie up and go and help Catherine fill the lock for us. The wind had other ideas. I could not keep the boat into the side - the wind blew the bows back out again and I had to drop the centre rope and resort to the engine to try and bring her back in line. "Resistance is futile" shouted the gusts and blew the entire boat out into the middle of the pound. Meanwhile, Catherine had struggled with the gate and had just about managed to close it. She took a quick breather and rapidly made her way to the other end of the lock chamber to open the paddles. By the time the windlass was on the spindle, the bottom gate had blown open once more, so she returned to that gate - oblivious to my antics in the pound above. Back on the boat, I had the brilliant (!) idea of pointing the nose of the boat into the top of the lock, resting it against the balance beam. The wind had the better idea of blowing the stern around towards the adjacent weir. Now I knew that it was probably unlikely that the draught of our boat would fit into this rapid flow of water, but my confidence in the ability of the wind was stronger than that of the weir, so I engaged reverse and smugly took the boat backwards... straight towards a large bank of reeds. "Whoops!" I shouted (well, actually, it was a little stronger than that) and tried to rememdy the situation, but the wind had me just where it wanted me and took the bows into the reeds with little concern for my efforts to keep the stern out - I was now proceeding in a backwards direction up the pound - with the boat sideways across it (the things you can do in a 36 foot boat)... Catherine had now managed to start filling the lock by opening the paddle anyway and *then* returning to shut the gate. Even this was not an easy task and it was only after a good few inches of water were behind the gate that the wind was unable to move it. Pleased with herself, she returned to where I was entertaining the wildlife with my lack of manoeuvrability. At last, I had managed to get the boat into the bank for its entire length and I stood there, out of breath holding the boat in. "Why is the boat facing the other way?" asked Catherine. "Don't get picky!" I replied and offered her the tiller. Of course, she turned the boat with no problem - pointed the bows into the bank and let the wind do the rest - and we were into the lock in no time. I quietly seethed with my windlass as I lifted the paddles... Finally, the lock was empty and Catherine roared out the lock - slowing for the moored boats - and continued on her way. For some reason, I tried to close the gates, only for them to swing open again - and for another boat to appear around the corner coming the other way! The next two locks - Stegneck and Scarland - were uneventful in comparison and we were grateful for being able to tie up opposite the Anchor pub above the adjacent lock. It was only lunchtime, but this was where we were going to meet our next crew the following morning so we enjoyed our food and set off for a walk into Gargrave. We stocked up for the next few days in the local Co-Op and realising that below Anchor lock, there were better moorings that were sheltered considerably more than we were above the lock, we moved the boat down for the night. With a bit more time to prepare the food, I set about cooking my Jeera Chicken (crushing my coriander seeds to great aromatic effect in the confines of a narrow boat kitchen - or should that be galley?) and we washed down an enjoyable meal with a bottle of Cotes du Rhone before retiring to bed early. Tomorrow: Our third crew, a rude hire boat and terrible wind (nothing to do with the curry, honest!) Mark Wickett n.b. Ruddy Duck